Researchers have extract genetic datum from fossilized tooth belonging to an ancient mintage of man that lived over two million years ago in South Africa . By far theoldest genetic informationever convalesce from any hominid , the data help scientists understand how this tenacious - extinct creature fits into the human mob Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree .
Presenting their findings in an as - yet unpublished study , the researchers explain that ancient DNA has never been recovered from any African hominin material old than 18,000 years old . Overcoming that vault , the generator go on to present protein sequencing data from the tooth enamel of four somebody belong to the speciesParanthropus robustus , each of which lived about 2.42 million age ago .
light upon in the Swartkrans cave , 40 kilometers ( 25 miles ) NW of Johannesburg , the tooth are believed to have accumulated as a resultant role of flashing flooding , before “ extensive cementation ” contributed to the preservation of enamel proteins overmillions of eld . This allow the investigator to sequence hundreds of aminic acid in each tooth using a operation holler mass spectrometry , revealing vital entropy aboutP. robustus ’s evolutionary relationships with other hominid .
“ We find that the sequences we recover placeParanthropuswithin hominins and as an outgroup to the clade includingHomo sapiens , Neanderthals and Denisovans , ” write the study authors . In other actor’s line , the ancient South African species is very much a part of the human phratry , but is a aloof cousin-german of the more closely pertain species that come forth in Eurasia in the last few hundred thousand eld – including modern world .
Interestingly , analysis also revealed that one of the African quartet “ might be more distantly related to the other three individuals than they are to each other . ” The researchers speculate that this outlier may even have belonged to a distinctParanthropusgroup , though they are ineffective to confirm this .
Fascinatingly , the identification of a protein encoded by a factor that is only present on theY - chromosomeenabled the study authors to describe two of the specimen as males , despite the fact that one of these had antecedently been categorized as female person free-base on the sizing of its ivory . Meanwhile , the other two soul displayed high concentrations of the X - chromosome version of this protein , indicating that they were distaff .
However , while the genetic information gleaned by the researchers has allowed them to uncover vital information about the owners of the ancient chompers , ultimately it is deficient to accurately placeP. robustuswithin the human kinsfolk Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree or unscramble all of the ancient hominin ’s evolutionary family relationship . Nevertheless , the study authors conclude that ” despite these caveats , the retrieval of [ two - million - year - old ] phylogenetically - informatory transmissible textile in African hominins can be considered a potentially transformative breakthrough for palaeoanthropology . ”
The study , which has not been dependent to peer review , is currently available as a preprint onbioRxiv .
